Dance, in its many shapes and guises, is becoming more visible and active in Australian society. It’s regularly featured on television; dance schools in Victoria number over 500; audiences for dance performances are on the rise and more and more people are looking to dance as a recreational practice.
And it’s not just the typical ballet, jazz and tap that has participants flocking in droves. While those dance forms, along with ballroom, could arguably be considered the closest things that white Australia has to its own cultural dance form, they are not necessarily the genres that are attracting the most participants. The multi-cultural population of present day Australia has created a burgeoning scene of diasporic cultural dance activity that bustles away in pockets around the land. Victoria and Melbourne in particular, is the hub of more dance activity than anyone can measure and it hails from all corners of the globe. Some of it plays out in traditional forms and some of it is tradition reinvented and turned into evolving hybrids. Some is purely social and some is created and designed for the performance stage.
Here in Melbourne there only seems to be one thing uniting cultural dance practices as diverse as Brazilian samba, Scottish dance and Korean influenced post-modern contemporary dance. It’s the simple fact that, while individual dance styles may be culturally specific, participation in them is not. Attraction to a dance form is not always about a cultural connection. It can be interest in the music, the challenge of the choreographic style itself, a social desire or the curiosity to experience or create something new.
Just like Australia as a whole, within each specific Victorian cultural dance community lies a multi-cultural mix.
Take Nirkoda Israeli Folk Dancing Club Melbourne, for instance. One-third of its 200-plus membership is not Jewish. In fact, not even all its teachers are Jewish. Many of that non-Jewish contingent know little about Israel, have no cultural connection to the country and certainly don’t speak Hebrew. But that makes little difference. According to Judi Banky, one of the clubs teachers and organizers, the appeal of Israeli dance goes beyond anything specifically Jewish or Israeli. The style has melodic music ranging from traditional to pop songs, grounded movement that is accessible to most fitness levels and the basics of the choreography can be picked up quickly.
Most importantly though, Israeli dancing is a social activity that is non-threatening and inclusive. Dancers hold hands, but don’t need a partner and the atmosphere is friendly and non-competitive. Everyone dances the same dance together, creating a sense of unity and community. There are 1000's of dances - and new ones being released all the time - to all sorts of music with influences as diverse as Greek, Arabic, Turkish and Baltic. The choreographed steps for each dance are the same around the world, so a dancer can go to a club in another country and be able to dance with the community there.
While Jewish people often gravitate to the dancing for spiritual or cultural reasons, non-Jews’ attraction to the form is often because of the enjoyment of the dancing itself. Geraldine Ryan, principal teacher of 
O’Shea-Ryan Academy of Irish Dance, has a similar story to tell. Having taught for over 60 years and recognized as the first teacher in Australia to be registered with the Irish Dancing Commission, Ryan has seen the changes in the Irish dance scene. She is no longer involved in the competition side of the dancing, which she perceives as having become much more lavish, showy and business oriented.
She now teaches Irish dance full time in country areas. She travels weekly between places as far away as Albury-Wodonga, Echuca, Bendigo, Mildura and Warrnambool to deliver classes around Victoria.
Ryan says that currently 20- 30% of her students are of non-Irish descent and come from backgrounds as diverse as Chinese, Italian, and Indian. Even though other dance styles are often available in their areas, students will choose to do Irish dance over ballet, jazz and tap. Ever since the Riverdance phenomenon put Irish dancing into a global mainstream consciousness, interest in the form from both Irish and non-Irish people has been growing. The attraction lies in its toe-tapping music, the social side of being with friends and the choreographic and musical variety of the hundreds of jigs and reels. There is the flowing, graceful and intricate footwork of the soft shoe dancing and the excitement and unison of the hard shoe dancing.
“Dance was always a social thing as well as a cultural avenue,” Ryan commented. It is this social side and the enjoyment of dance that she instills in her students rather than the pressure of competition. She brings in cultural education through explanations of the history and regions of the dances, and doesn’t demand that students get to any particular level of technical mastery in their training. She makes it accessible to all.
While participants don’t need any dance experience to dance with Nirkoda or enroll in a class at the O’Shea-Ryan Academy of Irish Dance, it helps to have a strong classical (ballet) background to join the performing company of the Verchovyna Ukrainian Dance School. 
Ukrainian dance shares similarities with the Spanish and Russian character dances that most ballet dancers learn throughout their training. The style is highly energetic and technically demanding, with classical training a plus for the females and acrobatic skills a requirement for the males.
It’s no surprise that serious classical students are attracted to not only the challenging choreography of the Ukranian dances but also the interstate and international touring and performing opportunities that the company offers. These are often greater than what they can do within their local ballet school. They are highly motivated to do well in the school in order to be selected for the company.
School and company director Melanie Moravski Dechnicz explained that students learn academic Ukrainian dance (as opposed to social dance) that hails from many regions of Ukraine. These are both traditional and modern choreographies. International teachers are brought in to work with the students and company. While the style is not exactly mainstream here in Australia (it is more visible in Canada), it is steadily growing with Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians alike, with Verchovyna’s non-Ukrainian student numbers increasing yearly.
There are many semi-professional companies like Verchovyna throughout Victoria and beyond presenting particular cultural dance at a high technical level. Companies such as Sabrina Chou Dance Company and KITA Performing Arts all perform and tour culturally specific dance but include dancers from outside of that cultural background.
There are Israeli dancing groups in Japan. Irish dancing has a presence in Spain and Germany and you can find a Bollywood, salsa, or Argentinian tango dance class in nearly every city. (In Melbourne multiple schools exist for many cultural dance styles - Nirkoda is just one of four Israeli folkdancing groups.) Specific dance styles are not limited to their cultural homeland and certainly not limited to culturally specific practitioners. Pushpa Velyavettil who runs the Melbourne-based Bollywood dance company Mai Nachungi and teaches Bollywood dance classes says that 70% of his participants, which include VCE students, are non-Indian. It’s the same story at local schools like Cuban Dance Academy, Sidewalk Tango and Melbourne Salsa where students not associated with the cultural origins of the dance styles come for the dancing and then learn things about the culture along the way. And for the most enthusiastic and hard-working (and in some cases, the most technically skilled) students, performance and touring opportunities often start coming their way.
Dance is a language with a non-verbal vocabulary and attraction to it is not always based on cultural understanding or empathy. There is something much more primal at play that cannot be easily defined. And while some participants want to connect to a cultural part of themselves, others just like the challenge of the steps, the beat of the music or the opportunity to meet other people. Some want to go beyond the social and community aspects and onto the stage. Here in Victoria, the breath of diasporic dance practice is so culturally and demographically diverse that there is a place for anyone who wants to embrace and enjoy it.
Stephanie Glickman
